3 Malaysian churches attacked in 'Allah' dispute, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

3 Malaysian churches attacked in 'Allah' dispute

KUALA LUMPUR: Three Malaysian Christian churches were attacked with firebombs on Friday, causing extensive damage to one and sharply escalating

religious tensions in the country over the use of the word "Allah" by non-Muslim minorities.

Prime Minister Najib Razak condemned the attacks by unidentified assailants, who struck before dawn in different suburbs of Kuala Lumpur. He said the government "will take whatever steps it can to prevent such acts."

Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the country's leaders were very concerned about the situation. "We don't want this to spread out into something else ... I am not only assuring the minorities, I am assuring all Malaysians, anybody who is in Malaysia, that they are safe," he told reporters.

Malaysia is often held up as a model for other Islamic countries because of its economic development, a progressive society and the generally peaceful coexistence of its different races. The Malay Muslim majority comprise 60% of the country's 28 million people while the rest are mostly ethnic Chinese and Indians. They follow Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and other faiths.

The Allah controversy, however, has the potential to shatter that carefully nurtured harmony, drive a deep racial wedge and scare away sorely needed foreign investment as the country struggles to emerge from the global financial crisis.

In the first attack, the ground-level office of the three-story Metro Tabernacle Church was destroyed in a blaze set off by a firebomb thrown by attackers on motorcycles soon after midnight, police said. The worship areas on the upper two floors were undamaged and there were no injuries.

Two other churches were attacked hours later, with one sustaining minor damage while the other was not damaged.

http://newageislam.com/3-malaysian-churches-attacked-in--allah--dispute/islamic-world-news/d/2345

Malaysia: All in the name of Allah, Islam and Pluralism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Pluralism

Malaysia: All in the name of Allah

By Gwynne Dyer

The row over a Malaysian High Court’s decision allowing non-Muslims to refer to god as ‘Allah’ is getting ugly. The Government must stop playing along with Islamic extremists

In the late-1980s, when I was in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, a friend suggested that I drive out into the desert near Jubail to see the oldest extant Christian church in the world. And there it was, surrounded by a chain-link fence to keep casual visitors and foreign archaeologists out. Experts who saw the site before it was closed said that the church was built by Nestorian Christians, and was probably used from the 4th to the 9th century.

Its existence embarrassed the Saudi Government, which prefers to believe that Arabia went straight from paganism to Islam. But it confirmed the assumption of most historians that Christianity was flourishing in the Arabian Peninsula in the centuries before the rise of Islam. So what did these Arabic-speaking Christians call god? Allah, of course.

I mention this because last week the Malaysian High Court struck down a three-year-old ban on non-Muslims using the word Allah when they speak of god in the Malay language. The court’s decision was followed by firebomb attacks on three Christian churches in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday night, and on Friday protesters at mosques in Kuala Lumpur carried placards reading “Allah is only for us.”

Prime Minister Najib Razak condemned the attacks on the churches, but he supports the ban on Christians using the word ‘Allah’ in Malay and is appealing the High Court decision.

http://newageislam.com/malaysia--all-in-the-name-of-allah/islam-and-pluralism/d/2363

Malaysia Strips Hindus of Rights, Islam and Pluralism, NewAgeIslam.com

Islam and Pluralism

Malaysia Strips Hindus of Rights

By Sandhya Jain

Afourth generation descendant of Tamil indentured labour, P Uthayakumar, HINDRAF legal adviser and secretary-general, Human Rights Party of Malaysia, has returned from New Delhi’s Pravasi Bharatiya Divas jamboree to face trial for ‘sedition’, a charge made by the ruling United Malay National Organisation regime.

Advocates Uthayakumar and M Manoharan spent 514 days in Kamunting Jail under the draconian Internal Security Act for leading the spectacular one-lakh-strong HINDRAF rally of 2008, which demanded equal citizenship rights for Malaysian Hindus and opposed the ethnic cleansing of Tamil Hindus in that Islamic country. If convicted, the duo could face a three-year prison term, a real possibility given the nature of the Malaysian judiciary and the studied indifference of the token creamy layer of establishment Hindus.

The Hindu organisation has been banned since, though it poses no threat to Malaysian social or political stability. As India’s human rights ‘industry’ only serves Western geo-political interests, it cannot be expected to speak up for suffering Malay Hindus. Hence New Delhi should take up the matter with Kuala Lumpur and urge it to permit HINDRAF to work as a non-governmental minorities and human rights organisation.

Sadly, the HINDRAF leaders who came here to present the Malaysian Indian Minority & Human Rights Violations Annual Report 2009, Malaysia Truly Racist, received only a perfunctory hearing by official New Delhi.

http://newageislam.com/malaysia-strips-hindus-of-rights/islam-and-pluralism/d/2395

Moderate Malaysia: Torture for beer drinkers,Islamic Sharia Laws, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic Sharia Laws

Moderate Malaysia: Torture for beer drinkers

By Mona Eltahawy

Oct 27, 2009

KUALA LUMPUR, MALAYSIA During the recent U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York, Foreign Minister Anifah Aman painted a picture of Malaysia that many like to see -- a multiethnic mosaic of religions, races and beliefs. "The Malaysian government has introduced the One Malaysia concept," Aman said. "It aims at fostering appreciation and respect for all races, seeing diversity as a source of strength. It envisages unity that arises from true acceptance instead of mere tolerance."

Yet the same day that Aman extolled the virtues of one Malaysia for all, a judge's ruling back home conveyed an image of the Southeast Asian nation with a two-track justice system that unfairly punishes Muslims.

The chief Islamic law judge of the eastern state of Pahang upheld a religious court's verdict to cane a Muslim woman for drinking beer. There is debate here over whether the state law under which Kartika Sari Dewi Shukarno was convicted and sentenced violates provisions of federal law. The question underscores the challenge that individual state governments -- which have sole authority over Islamic issues -- pose to the federal government, and the fairness of a legal system that applies only to Muslims, whose personal offenses are tried under "sharia," or religious, law.

After Kartika, 32, pleaded guilty to drinking, the sentencing judge threatened to jail her for three years if she didn't pay a fine of $1,400. Kartika paid the fine and came close to being caned in August before an uproar in the media and among rights activists earned her a temporary reprieve. She would be the first Muslim woman to be caned in Malaysia if the sentence is carried out.

http://newageislam.com/moderate-malaysia--torture-for-beer-drinkers-/islamic-sharia-laws/d/2042

Yoga haram for Muslims! Are Malaysian clerics losing their mind?, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

Yoga haram for Muslims! Are Malaysian clerics losing their mind?

Riba means usury (excessive interest) and is explicitly forbidden in Islam. However, most major banks and financial institutions in this country offers banking and loan services to the people, Muslims included using that very same interest rates system to make profit. Yes maybe there are a lot of Islamic banking services offered nowadays but still the majority of loans offered, car, housing, business loans are still using the interest rate system. So generally speaking, this haram practice had been going on for decades and the religious authorities didn't do anything to stop it.

Hijab, tudung and the covering of woman's hair.

The Qur'an instructs the male believers (Muslims) to talk to wives of Muhammad behind a hijab (tudung). However, in later Muslim societies this instruction, specific to the wives of Muhammad, was generalized, leading to the segregation of the Muslim men and women. Today it is generally accepted by Muslim scholars worldwide that a Muslim women who had reached puberty should be covering their entire body except for the hands, the feet, and the face, hence the wearing of hijab (well unless you're anti-hadith that is). That is why you can see more than half of Muslims women in this country don the tudung. Then what about the rest of them? Are they not Muslims? True believers of the faith? You can see them everyday and everywhere. If they call themselves Muslims, why haven't they abided to God's words and the teachings of His prophet? Can I expect a fatwa decreeing those women as deviant Muslims? I don't think so.

http://newageislam.com/yoga-haram-for-muslims!-are-malaysian-clerics-losing-their-mind?--/islamic-world-news/d/941